I am at a stage in life where i’m attached, to a person.
it has changed me, my outlook on things, my thoughts… etc. etc.
i was wondering,
is love just a feeling?
can you induce one to love?
do you love or is love a ‘thing’ that - happens?
is there any such thing as unconditional love?
so one falls into love, can he fall out of it? is this even possible?
hmmmm… questions questions
Githa, the difference between you and I is that you have found love, I have not. But it seems interesting that we share all the same questions, and therefore I guess we can suppose that every single human being must ask these same questions. Even though I really don’t have any answers to your inquiries, I do simply want to say that you should value and hold on to the gift that you have been given. Make your relationship into something more, something far beyond what you would expect. Become closer, I guess that is what I am saying. Personally I have found that the world becomes saturated with possibilities when you don’t take it for granted. I make it a daily effort to not take anything for granted.
I don’t know if I’ve been helpfull, I guess thats not for me to decide.
-Think
Hi.
Just reminding you: I’ve no idea as to what I’m going through at this point.
All I know is that I’m hooked, a bit. I’m not exactly sure if labelling this
feeling “LOVE” would be correct. This is why i ask:
What is love and why is it the way it is?
love is just a word, this thing we call ‘love’ is beyond words, it is beyond even human physicality.
Love is an emotion.
Emotions were (and maybe still are) a very important part of our evolution. They are electro-chemical impulses in the brain which make us react in certain ways to certain stimuli.
You explain love in very scientific, rational terms. However I am sure you would agree that love as a self-contained emotion/phenomenon gives rise to inescapably irrational behaviour. So are we saying that the rational, the scientific, gives rise to the irrational; or is it the case that there is something more to the experience of loving someone? Perhaps, dare I say it, bound in as I am by purveyors of triumphant logic, something spiritual?
Behaviour that helped propogate our genes was selected for by default. Whether that was rational or irration was not really a primary concern for nature 
Spirituality is by no means separate from science. In fact science is a profound source of spirituality, far more than any myth or fairy tale.
And understanding the physiology of love does not in any way trivialise it .
… but it does remove its mystery, and hence, much of its literary value.
Firstly, love is as riddled with ‘impure’ underlying notions as anything else. When considering love people frequently make the distinction between love and lust but I don’t find this a useful distinction to make because the former inevitably involves a degree of the latter. On top of this visceral side to love (and we cannot separate the visceral from the spiritual) there is the ego(t)istic nature of love too. Our feelings of someone change a lot when we know about the feelings that they have for us. Both love and religion are heavily influenced by selfishness. This is inevitable and should not be denied in an attempt to remain ‘pure’. To an extent we love someone because they love us.
But then there is a spiritual, selfless side to love too. My point is that it cannot be purely visceral or purely spiritual but must be a combination of the two. Sivakami wrote the following: "Spirituality is by no means separate from science. In fact science is a profound source of spirituality, far more than any myth or fairy tale. And understanding the physiology of love does not in any way trivialise it. " and Pangloss’s response is exactly the one I would give: “… but it does remove its mystery, and hence, much of its literary value.” You can try to explain love all you like with the use of science but ultimately the emotions will remain indefinable. You can say that an emotion is caused by a release of a certain chemical but why does that chemical have this effect? There must be a limit to how much science can explain and anything beyond that limit belongs to the world of the spiritual. It is both mysterious and magical as Pangloss said. Whilst ‘explaining’ emotions does not trivialies them, does it actually explain anything? Are we left with a better understanding of ourselves, which is surely the intended aim?
I think that it is better to leave some things to the world of the inexplicable and let science concentrate on the rest. Sivakami let me leave you with a question (posed by that wonderful film A.I.) : If a robot is programmed to love, and this could be possible since science can explain our emotions apparently is its love any different from ‘real’ human love? Do we owe this robot love in return?
… correctum.
i won’t attempt to answer alex’s robot question, though i’d very much like to hear what sivakami’s answer is…
it may be worth reiterating that this question of where the boundaries of scientific discovery are set/or whether any such boundaries should exist, is, entirely reliant on the products of philosophy of science, and any ethical conclusions as well.
arts need to be controlled because the beliefs they can represent can often turn to assumptions.
the same goes for science. its activites are also more than capable of causing conflict. possibly even undermining much artistic expression.
yet it may be worth asking what james joyce, or any other modernist stream-of-consciousness writer would think seeing the developments in psychology. their work has not been undermined, and can still bring certain emotions closer to a reader who is no expert in psychology.
however, the development of this science has noticeably had an effect on what has since been produced in the arts. arts and sciences (in this case) obviously occupy the same space, with science pushing arts, limiting artistic boundaries.
to make this clearer, modernism (as a general phase) was replaced by post-modernism, or as i like to put it - post-psychology.
when a scientist asks - what is love, and then proceeds to cut peoples’ brains up to find out, can they pause to consider what a post-neurology situation would have on the arts. please.
p.s. - artists will start (as they have) representing things, as opposed to helping people learn about themselves. this trend is dangerous, but i’ll save that for later (after exams).
I don’t think that art can provide the answer to this question in the same way that science cannot provide an answer that is satisfactory. That is why I said that love belongs in the zone of the inexplicable (by science or art or any other form of ‘explanation’). However I side closer to the literary/art side because I would say that art allows more for the inexplicable/mysterious/magical/imaginative than science does. But in relaity of course both try to explain and both fall short when it comes to love.
I was just looking back at the orignal questions. I think it is possible to love someone unconditionally because love can be (is?) entirely irrational. Hence it cannot be explained through philosophising. This could be seen to contrast with what I said about love being ego(t)istic because both unconditional and unrequited love would be ruled out if that were entirely true. But it doesn’t necessarily contradict that because as Francois Truffaut said, “Every love is particular and no love ressembles another.” Some people will love in a more selfish way than others.
To me (and many others), a thing becomes more beautiful when understood, not less.
Because it helped us evolutionarily.
Of course there may be a limit to what science can explain. But false is the hidden implication than any other discipline can explain more. No other discipline has come close to what science has helped us understand/explain.
You seem to be assuming that we humans are not robots . When all the evidence points to the contrary
"To me (and many others), a thing becomes more beautiful when understood, not less. "
To me (and most others), a thing becomes more beautiful when experienced. When it brings something new to your emotional machinery.
If I drive a really lush car - say, a Porsche - and I enjoy the experience of driving it, the experience is not at its greatest when I finally understand how the car works, why its specially designed rear suspension makes it such a smooth ride.
That’s not to devalue the inherent curiosity we may have for such things, the need to understand in order to recreate. Only humans displaying this type of extelligence will see something as more beautiful once they understand why it is beautiful. And the vast majority of people who do not have the will to display such a need to ‘understand’ are not exempt from experiencing beauty, or love for that matter.
So thinking of stars as god’s daisy chain is as emotionally satisfying as understanding that they are huge balls of fire which produce an immense amount of energy through fusion ??
You’ll certainly maintain and drive it better
Jokes apart, our in-built curiosity and wonder certainly do help us enjoy enquiry and understanding.
Whats more emotionally satisfying … believing that you were created suddenly by some divine entity (probably from someone else’s rib!) or understanding how we evolved over billions and billions of years from simple replicators through a gradual process of random mutation and non-random natural selection ??
My choice is clear … others may choose differently of course.
I have often found that those who label science as cold and mechanical are often the ones who haven’t been exposed to the beauty and wonders of it.
I’m quite glad you answered in that way. I never assumed that we weren’t robots hence putting real in inverted commas. You’ve chosen to reduce yourself to the nature of programmable robot and that’s fine. What does it matter whether your programmer was a God or a scientific process? However I think that one should (I’m sure you have) consider the implications this has on the way one lives his life. I said that love was largely selfish but not entirely so. Your reductionism of human life (and reductionism is appropriate given the aboe quotation) must render any love you offer entirely selfish.
Its not somthing I chose … its something we’ve discovered relatively recently.
I am not a genetic determinist. Just because natural selection programmed us in a certain way does not mean we cannot overcome the objectives of these programs while using the very same programs.
For eg. I can choose to use all my maternal instincts in rearing a child not at all genetically related to me. Or I can choose to enjoy sex while ensuring that I dont produce offspring.
But I cannot overcome the instincts I have, not beyond a certain extent. Emotions, aggression, dominance, pleasure seeking etc will all very much remain a part of me.
I think the topic of love has been thoroughly investigated by the above posts, although I don’t think it has been agglomerated into a cohesive explanation implementing many of the posters views. Anyway, the only thing I wish to add, in case some are wondering, is my opinion on the question of “Why do we love?”. Many don’t even wonder about this question and fail to understand it’s importance, but I think it pertinent. I believe love is like a homing device, each one of us has different tastes in the opposite sex, we treat people differently, we ourselves our all distinctly different in personality and physical appearance. In order to find the right person for us we feel love for a certain group of the opposite sex (ie. Brunette, Chinese, 5’5, 125lbs), somehow - by nature - the girl/guy you see and feel love for has something to do with you being the best you can be. There are also degrees of love, knowing these degrees is very important in figuring out if you are with the person you want to be with for the rest of your life. For instance, if you are in love for the first time and your love for the first was on one degree, then you are with another person and your degree is lower than the first, you go with a third and your love is higher than both the first and the second. And so on and so on, many people don’t pay attention to their emotions in any great detail (or atleast they don’t pay attention to the distinct differences between their emotions).
What’s your take people?
I think you are absolutely right; fast-paced modern life detracts from our ability to appreciate and reflect on our own feelings. Perhaps we should all write personal poetry, even if nobody else will ever see it.
It is interesting how you say that people should be more critical about the relative intensity of their emotions, and I agree in principle, but it is important to remember that it is very difficult to evaluate such abstract ideas when you yourself are experiencing them. Sure, a relationship you are in at one stage of your life might not be the ‘optimal’ one, but if is a happy one nonetheless, it is very difficult to tell until it is over. You may never find the ‘optimal’ partner for whatever reason.
We do need to pay more attention to our emotions, but I think any positive emotion should be valued whether it arises from some sort of ‘optimal’ arrangement or not. I do not think it helps us to focus on feelings when people take every opportunity to dehumanise the human ‘machine’ and say that everything we do is predetermined by genetics and that everything we feel is some sort of utilitarian evolutionary impulse. Some of the things we feel undoubtedly are, but other things are not: as you say, Magius, people need to “pay attention to the distinct differences between their emotions.” What do you think about the scientific utilitarian view of emotion, Magius?
Genetic determinism besumes me but then so does a statement such as this:
If natural selection has programmed you in a certain way then why would you have any desire to go against it? Why would you have any desire to show genuine selfless compassion? It is a fallacious argument to say that natural selection has programmed us in a certain way but that we can go against it, why would natural selection leave any bolder unturned? (I can’t believe I’m personifying a biological process!) If you’re only motivation is to pass on your genes then why would you want “to overcome the objectives of these programs.” They wouldn’t allow you to because you would have been programmed in such a way that you would have no motive to go against your programming UNLESS you had some kind of soul/spiritual side (or whatever you want to call it) that leads you into selfless acts of compassion. In an attempt to make this argument reasonable you have actually destroyed it. It’s all or nothing I’m afriad. Either we’re motivated by a selfish nature that has been programmed in us (in which case NO act is done selflessly/without the intention of passing on our genes) or we’re not just here to pass on our genes. And in my opinion genuine love (which is not purely lust) is the best example to counter your theory.
Magius, I like what you are saying and agree with you. I don’t think there is a reason why we love. As I have said, it belongs to the realm of the inexplicable. As for degrees, definitely. Every love is different, as Truffaut (and Ben) have said and there is no overall definition of love that can explain everyone’s experience of it. Maybe love is just the strongest feeling felt so far. I.e. when you think you fall in love for the first time, you think it’s genuine. But then someone else comes along and your previous love appears to be little more than selfish lust.
I know I said that I don’t like making the distinction between the two but in truth one has to. All love will contain elements of lust but some more than others. Is the more genuine one, the one that is built less on lust?